strange formatting behaviour Word 2003 (not the automatic update issue)

[jaziniho]

A quick outline of the what I've done and what problem it has led to:

(Using MS Word 2003 (11.8026.8028) SP2)

I have a series of documents, not of them are particularly long - all
around 10 pages.
To each of these documents I have attached a common template -
BookTemplate.dot
The documents are set to "automatically update document styles" in the
attach template dialog.

The documents have been formatted using the styles from the template -
one hierachy for the formatting of bookbodytext and the associated
headings etc, and another hierarchy for code samples.

After closing the documents and returning to them all seems well. The
next day the formatting had been scrambled - some of the
bookbodyheadings had become code samples, certain paragraphs and become
figure holders, others captions - I can discern no noticable pattern.

I went back to the version of the documents before I attached the
template and went through a similar procedure - again the formatting
has become scrambled. I thought I had managed to narrow down the cause
to the deleting of "Comment" styles in the Organizer, after doing this,
saving, closing and altering font in template and then re-opening, the
formatting was scrambled. But - the same has happened to the documents
yet again, even though the "Comment" styles have all been left in this
time.

I really have no idea what could be causing this, but it is becoming
quite a headache as I've formatted all of the documents several times -
and lost all the formatting every time.

Any suggestions or pointer to more information would be appreciated.
I can of course supply more details of the situation if required.
Thanks,
Tom G

 

[Guest]

Might be worth checking for updates (my Word is at 11.8026.8036).

Lucy
--
MOS Master Instructor
South Australia

If this post answered your question please let us know as others may be
interested too

 

[jaziniho]

Unfortunately I'm working in a big corporate with an automatic update
system, I'm not sure applying patches that haven't been passed on by
the IT team is going to make them very happy. Double this with the fact
I don't speak the langauge of the country I'm in so I can't ask the IT
team to forward the latest patch on :S

But thanks for the suggestion,
Tom G

 

[Cindy M.]

A quick outline of the what I've done and what problem it has led to:

(Using MS Word 2003 (11.8026.8028) SP2)

I have a series of documents, not of them are particularly long - all
around 10 pages.
To each of these documents I have attached a common template -
BookTemplate.dot
The documents are set to "automatically update document styles" in the
attach template dialog.

The documents have been formatted using the styles from the template -
one hierachy for the formatting of bookbodytext and the associated
headings etc, and another hierarchy for code samples.

After closing the documents and returning to them all seems well. The
next day the formatting had been scrambled - some of the
bookbodyheadings had become code samples, certain paragraphs and become
figure holders, others captions - I can discern no noticable pattern.

I went back to the version of the documents before I attached the
template and went through a similar procedure - again the formatting
has become scrambled. I thought I had managed to narrow down the cause
to the deleting of "Comment" styles in the Organizer, after doing this,
saving, closing and altering font in template and then re-opening, the
formatting was scrambled. But - the same has happened to the documents
yet again, even though the "Comment" styles have all been left in this
time.

I really have no idea what could be causing this, but it is becoming
quite a headache as I've formatted all of the documents several times -
and lost all the formatting every time.

Any suggestions or pointer to more information would be appreciated.
I can of course supply more details of the situation if required.

I suspect the document may be damaged. If you copy, say, a couple of
pages to a new document and attach the template, close, re-open, etc. Is
the problem still there, or is it gone?

If it's gone, try
1. Unlinking "update styles"
2. Save as XML. Close. Re-open and save as a *.doc. (Saving in a
round-trip format often "shakes loose" junk that can cause problems.)
3. Relink the template and test.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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